Pedagogy

The Problem

Depth without navigation, or navigation without depth

Textbooks contain everything you need to learn physics. But they offer no structure beyond page order. No map of what depends on what. No way to know if you've actually mastered a concept before moving on. No review schedule.

Interactive platforms solve some of this, but they sacrifice depth. Lessons get simplified. Calculus gets dropped. The result is conceptual understanding at best, not the working competency you need to solve real problems.

StemGraph provides both. Textbook-level rigor with full structural navigation, adaptive sequencing, and spaced repetition.

Atomicity

One lesson, one skill

Each lesson covers exactly one concept. Not a chapter, not a section of a chapter. One skill. This matters because of spaced repetition. When a review surfaces weeks later, you need to know exactly what's being tested. If a lesson taught three things, a failed review tells you nothing about which one decayed.

Worked Examples

See it done before you try it

Every section of every lesson includes a fully worked example before any practice problems. The example shows every algebraic step, every substitution, every unit conversion. You see the method applied to a concrete problem first, then practice it yourself.

Parameterized Questions

Different numbers every time

Practice problems and review questions are generated from parameterized templates. The structure stays the same, but the numbers change every time. You can't memorize that the answer to problem 3 is 4.2 m/s. You have to understand the method well enough to solve it with any set of values.

Deliberate Distractors

Wrong answers that teach

The wrong answers in each question aren't random. They're the results you'd get by making a specific common mistake: using the wrong trig function, dropping a negative sign, forgetting to decompose a vector. If you pick one, you know exactly what went wrong.

Mastery

You advance by demonstrating competency

Progress is not measured by time spent or videos watched. You advance when you can solve problems correctly. Reviews test the same skills with fresh numbers after increasing time gaps. If you can still do it a week later, a month later, you've learned it.